The thing about funerals…

What are funerals exactly? A way of saying a final goodbye? An established tradition? An end to a life journey? I suppose they are all these things.

I went to a friend’s funeral last week, someone who I had lost touch with but just connected with again.It was a rock and roll send off, both poignant, beautiful and celebratory. The closing of a chapter.

I found the funeral to be a bitter sweet experience, that sense of sadness and loss on the one side and love and reconnection with old friends on the other.

It has got me thinking about death and how we deal with it or more correctly don’t deal with it in our society. Death in our culture is clandestine and removed. It is not talked and discussed as a natural life cycle but instead avoided as a subject, not mentioned or thought about until you come to it face to face.

A funeral inevitably makes you ponder your own existence and has this way of making all your problems shrink to their true size. A serious reality check. In this moment we gain a clarity about what is important and how precious life is. We realise that we are so fortunate and are momentarily deeply grateful.

My question is this… How do we retain this gratitude and clarity when ordinary life takes over again?